Currently, with rapid development and popularity of communications systems, an indoor/outdoor location of user equipment (UE for short) is important information for both a network side and a terminal.
In an architecture based on the 3rd Generation partnership project (3GPP for short), a network side obtains location information of a UE by using a Radio Frequency (RF for short) fingerprint location technology.
A specific process of the RF fingerprint location technology is: A fingerprint library (or a location feature library) is first constructed for an area to be identified. The fingerprint library records an RF signal feature (for example, the RF signal feature is a value of a strength value of a signal received by the UE from a nearby base station) in each minimum unit location area. Next, when the network side performs location, if an RF signal feature reported by a UE at an unknown location matches an RF signal feature in a minimum unit location area in the fingerprint library (matching refers to that if an error between the RF signal feature reported by the UE at the unknown location and the RF signal feature in the minimum unit location area falls within a preset range, the two RF signal features match), the network side deduces that the UE at the unknown location is located within the minimum unit location area, thereby achieving a purpose of locating the UE.
However, in the prior art, location of a UE by using an RF fingerprint location technology also has the following disadvantage: The RF fingerprint location technology needs to use a location feature library as a priori knowledge. In application of an existing network, an outdoor UE having a GNSS function performs accurate location measurement in advance, and constructs an outdoor location feature library, to accumulate a priori knowledge for subsequent location work. However, because the GNSS function cannot perform accurate location measurement indoors and the network side generally determines a location of the UE indoors by using only a handover of the UE between cells (for example, a case in which the UE camps on a cell, a case of a handover of the UE between cells, and a moving speed of the UE), it is extremely difficult for the existing RF fingerprint location technology to construct an indoor location feature library. In addition, the constructed indoor location feature library has low location precision and an undesirable indoor location effect.